


Raising a Flag at the First Sign of Failsafe

by sarken



Category: Real News RPF
Genre: F/M, Lesbian Character, Queer Character, Sports Metaphors, UST
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-05-04
Updated: 2009-05-04
Packaged: 2017-10-04 12:06:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,440
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29833
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sarken/pseuds/sarken
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After a fight with Susan, Rachel turns to Keith.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Raising a Flag at the First Sign of Failsafe

When the phone rings, he's watching television in the dark, the volume turned down low even though he lives alone. He lets the phone ring twice before he reaches for it, and once more before he answers. "Rachel," he sighs.

"Hi, Keith," she singsongs, and she is perhaps the only person who can do that with his name.

"Shouldn't you be asleep?" he asks, glancing at the clock on his cable box. Everyone should be asleep at this hour, he realizes.

"I'm driving, so probably not." He hears her yawn, and then she says, "Sorry. I was actually brought up with manners, but I thought I'd keep at least one hand on the wheel. I think the guy in the next lane appreciated my decision."

Keith hates the way she drives, but it has nothing to do with her speeding or talking on the phone or playing with the old, cantankerous radio. It has everything to do with the fact that she never sleeps, that she relies on caffeine and his voice in her ear to keep her focused.

"You're not home yet?" he asks.

There's a hesitation on her end before she says, "I'm coming back to the city, actually. I'm in the tunnel -- the middle one, the one with traffic in both directions. You know, the one you hate."

"Why?"

"Mostly because you hate it."

"Rachel," he says. It sounds exactly like _you know that's not what I mean_, but she ignores it anyway.

"I bought beer. I'm coming over and we're drinking it," she says. Then: "Shit. I missed the ramp."

"Go home, Rachel." He rubs his forehead and scowls at the television when his team misses a field goal.

"Beer, Keith. Free beer. Well, free for you. I paid for it, so the least you can do is drink it. Hang on." A few seconds tick past, and he can only guess what illegal maneuver she's executing to correct for missing the ramp. She drives the city streets the same way she drives the unpaved roads by her house. "Okay, here we go. You know, you really shouldn't kvetch when someone is bringing you free beer. It's generally considered rude."

"Says she who makes phone calls at unholy hours and yawns into the phone."

"One, I knew you'd be awake. Two, we already talked about the whole sacrificing-manners-to-avoid-a-head-on-collision thing. And, three, shut up. I'm bringing you beer. I'm going to get you drunk and take advantage of your showerhead."

"I'm not sure if I should be amused, offended, or horrified," he admits. "My showerhead? Why not me?"

"You don't have massaging jets."

He scrunches his eyes shut. "My _shower_head."

Rachel laughs into the phone. "I should be there in five minutes."

"Great," he says. "I'll just use the remaining time to scrub that particular image from my brain. And hide my loofah."

She gives a soft, mock-horrified scream. "That was completely uncalled for. I have never once done obscene things with your -- wait, do you even have a loofah? I am so totally buying you a loofah for Christmas, Keith."

He has at least a half dozen, all given as gag gifts, but he doesn't tell her that. "I look forward to it."

"I'm sure you -- oh! Parking place."

He hears her drop the phone onto the seat next to her. "That was a fast five minutes," he says, raising his voice so she can hear him while she parks.

"I can never remember you live here," she says, her voice muffled and distant. "I always think you're a few blocks up."

"Understandable," he says. "I mean, you've only been here, what, fifty, sixty times?"

"Remember the part about the free beer?" she asks, and her voice is louder as she brings the phone back up to her ear. He hears her slam the truck door. "And the no kvetching rule?"

"It's a rule?" he asks. He stands and looks out his window, watching her walk up the street. There is no one else on the block.

"Well, maybe not a rule, but a guiding principle and a damn good idea. You know I'll drink it all myself if I have to." She stops walking, and the sound over the phone line changes as she cradles the phone between her shoulder and her ear so she can wave. "I know you're looking out the window. I can see you."

"That would be because I'm not hiding," he says, but he steps away from the window. "And, yes, I do know you are fully capable of drinking the entire six-pack. But speaking of rules, as a general one, I don't clean up vomit, so you might want to keep that in mind."

"Puking is a waste of good alcohol," she says, and he hears her mumble something to the doorman as she enters the building. "I know how to pace myself."

"I'm sure you do."

"I'm getting on the elevator and I'm hanging up," she tells him. "Be up in a minute."

The line goes dead and Keith heads for the door. He barely has it unlocked before he hears the elevator ding from down the hall, so he opens the door and leans against the frame as he waits for her. When Rachel sees him, she grins and holds the beer aloft. "Booze," she proclaims, and he winces at how well her voice carries.

"Neighbors," he says in a hushed tone. "Sleeping."

She cringes at her mistake. "Sorry," she says in a stage whisper.

"Just get in here."

She gives him the once-over as she walks past him and toward the living room. "Nice jammies," she says, glancing back over her shoulder to catch another glimpse of the baseball pattern on his pants. "Do they have a matching top?"

Keith closes the door, locking it and sliding the chain into place. "They do not," he says, following her into the other room.

Rachel sets the six-pack down on the coffee table, taking a bottle for herself before collapsing onto the sofa. She twists off the top, takes a sip, and glances at the television before saying, "Your team is losing."

"I know," he says, sitting next to her. He ignores the beer and the television, instead turning to face her. "Why aren't you at home?"

She shrugs with one shoulder and takes a long drink. When she tosses the bottle cap onto the glass tabletop, it bounces off, landing on the carpet.

Keith takes a deep breath and looks at her carefully, studying her until she starts to squirm.

"Stop it," she says.

"Have you been drinking?" he asks.

She holds up her beer. "Duh."

"That's not what I mean."

She turns to him and frowns sharply. "Can we not talk?" she asks, and Keith notices how red and puffy her eyes are behind her glasses.

"Yeah, okay," he agrees, sitting back and turning his attention to the television. He rests his arm along the back of the couch, and barely a minute goes by on the game clock before Rachel scoots closer to him. He wraps his arm around her shoulders, rubbing her upper arm reassuringly when he hears her sniffle.

She places her beer between her knees as she leans against him, resting her head on his shoulder.

"Did you have a fight?" he asks, and he can feel her nod. He doesn't need to ask how bad it was, not after she drove four hours back to the city.

She sits up long enough to take a drink. "I fucked up. Majorly, supremely, and royally. It was pretty spectacular." On television, the receiver fumbles a pass, and Rachel snorts. "Kind of like that, actually."

"It could have been worse," Keith offers. "They still have the ball."

"Yeah, well, they're way ahead of me," Rachel says. "I can't even tell if I've been benched, suspended, or kicked out of the league."

"What the hell did you do?" The words are out of his mouth before he can stop them, and he doesn't have to look at her to know he completely shut down the conversation they were trying to pretend they weren't having.

"Do you have any food in here?" she asks, grabbing her beer and standing up a little unsteadily.

"Rachel," he says, and he's not sure if it's an apology or a scolding.

"I mean, I bought some chips when I stopped for the beer, but I forgot to eat them. It's, uh, it's the ranch Doritos -- the big bag. Maybe I should go back out and get them." She's talking too fast and gesturing too much as she looks out the window, craning her neck to see the sidewalk. She looks like she would rather jump than have this conversation.

"Anything you can find in the kitchen is yours," Keith says, knowing that if she leaves his apartment, she won't come back. He leans forward and takes a bottle out of the six-pack, even though he has no intention of drinking it. "You brought the beer. The least I can do is feed you."

Rachel lets the curtain fall back into place as she steps back from the window. "The entire kitchen?" she asks skeptically, walking down the hall to the kitchen. "You're not going to have a cow if I eat your ice cream?"

"I bought the big tub," he answers, returning the beer to the pack. "I'd pay to see you eat it all."

"Thanks, but I'm not in the mood," she calls back, and he hears her looking through the cupboards, opening the refrigerator. "Should I be checking expiration dates and looking for mold? Employing the smell test or anything?"

"Remember the no kvetching rule?" he says, picking up the remote and fast-forwarding through the halftime report.

"You have fruit," Rachel says, coming back into the room with a shiny green and red apple in her hand. She walks between Keith and the coffee table, snatching a beer from the six-pack as she passes. "I wasn't expecting you to have fruit. You don't seem fruity to me."

"I don't seem fruity?" Keith repeats. He presses play on the remote and sets it aside.

"No." Rachel sits down and bites into the apple. Her mouth full, she says, "Why? Do you want to be fruity? This is a good apple, by the way."

He gives her a sideways look. "I'll tell the tree you said so."

Rachel wedges her beer between her knees and opens it with her free hand. "I just mean that I'd hire you to do my produce shopping."

"You couldn't afford me," he says, watching as she takes another bite, juice dripping onto her wrist. He hears her exhale in annoyance before she brings her wrist to her mouth and licks the juice off.

"Maybe not a couple months ago, but I make good money now. I work two jobs, you know. Somewhere in the world, there is an out-of-work pundit who would very much like one of them." She looks at the television and sits back a little on the couch. Resting her front teeth against the apple, she says, "This was a mistake," and bites into the apple with a sharp crunch.

"It's late," Keith says, because his only other option is _you don't mean that_, and he makes it a practice to avoid telling Rachel what she thinks or means. "It was a long week."

Rachel bends her knees, drawing her feet up onto the couch. She holds her beer with one hand, the bottle resting against her stomach. Nibbling what's left of the apple, she says, "Has there been a short week?"

"There have been good weeks," he offers. "The DNC was good."

"The DNC was before." She drops the apple core into the empty space in the six-pack and takes a long drink of her beer. "And it was part of the problem."

Keith picks at the seam on the arm of the couch, trying to project an air of disinterest. "What happened?" he tries again, like maybe she'll share if he isn't really listening.

Chewing on her thumbnail and bouncing her leg anxiously, Rachel says, "I fucked up," each word its own sentence. She moves her hand away from her mouth long enough to take another drink. "I don't know how to fix it. I'm here. I'm drinking. I'm trying not to think about it."

"Healthy," he comments.

She snorts. "Yeah, well."

Keith turns his attention back to the football game, watching silently as his team loses possession. "They can still win," he says, though he doesn't know if Rachel is rooting for the same team, or even if she cares. "It's not even a long shot; they're just a field goal away. They've just got to hold 'em, get the ball back..."

Rachel finishes her beer and sets the empty bottle on the coffee table with too much force. "Can we stop pretending?" she asks, and Keith feels the cushions shift as she turns toward him. "This game, it's from like a week ago. We both know what happens, how it ends."

"I like to watch it play out," he says, staring straight ahead. "Makes it seem more real."

Rachel scrubs her hands over her face, growling against her palms before taking a deep, shaky breath. Closing her eyes, she leans her head against the back of the couch, her hands dropping to her lap. "Fast-forward," she whispers. "Just -- just a little."

He kisses her then, and she lets him, staying still while he sucks on her lower lip, opening her mouth for his tongue. She tastes like hops and malt, and he feels her hand rest on his arm, her fingers cold and damp from holding her beer bottle.

When he pulls away, Rachel opens her eyes, blinking as she stares up at the ceiling. "I can't," she says, her voice raw. "We could still pull this off, but not if...not if I do this."

Keith sighs, leaning forward and staring down at the floor. "I know," he says, shaking his head at himself. He remembers Denver, the sharp edges and smooth skin of her ankle beneath his hand. He wants to be the one to make it better, not the one to mess it up. "I know."

He feels her hand move up his back, settling between his shoulder blades, and he turns toward her. Rachel's hand slips lightly away as her dry lips brush against his: no pressure, but the briefest of hesitations before she ducks away, eyes focused downward.

"I have to try," she says, her words shaking. "I want to."

:end:


End file.
